The Otherworld in Myth, Folklore, Cinema, and Brain Science

The Otherworld in Myth, Folklore, Cinema, and Brain Science PDF Author: Jim Kline
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527532909
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 255

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Book Description
This volume explores a dimension of reality usually scoffed at by rational-thinking individuals living in modern industrialized societies, but still experienced by these same individuals when they are in a stage of sleep known as rapid eye movement (REM) sleep; this is the stage in which vivid and bizarre dreams are a person’s living reality. While in this stage, we believe what we experience is real, but then deny its reality upon awakening as we go about our daily routines. Yet, in many cases, a dream with vivid imagery and bizarre goings on is communicating with the dreamer in an archaic language directly associated with an “Otherworld” reality. This reality exists within us and expresses concepts and ideas about our realm of existence that pertain to our waking lives, as well as to an alternate, archaic life with its own language and ideas transcending physical reality. By studying various myths and folk tales, along with cinematic portrayals of otherworldly experiences, commentary from modern individuals, and reports from traditional shamans who are experts at traversing the Otherworld reality, this text discerns the features and characteristics of this supernatural realm. Contemporary research into the Otherworld marks this realm as corresponding to the unconscious substratum of the human psyche, what C.G. Jung referred to as the collective unconscious. Certain scientists have found evidence of its connection with various aspects of brain functioning, suggesting that the brain in many ways encourages a belief in the Otherworld. However, it would be a mistake to call the Otherworld a figment of the human imagination, since this realm seems to have a type of physical existence. The book considers the Otherworld to exist and provides reasons why rational-thinking individuals are hesitant to accept its existence even when their brains are telling them: the Otherworld is real, and you have just experienced it.

The Otherworld in Myth, Folklore, Cinema, and Brain Science

The Otherworld in Myth, Folklore, Cinema, and Brain Science PDF Author: Jim Kline
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527532909
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 255

Get Book Here

Book Description
This volume explores a dimension of reality usually scoffed at by rational-thinking individuals living in modern industrialized societies, but still experienced by these same individuals when they are in a stage of sleep known as rapid eye movement (REM) sleep; this is the stage in which vivid and bizarre dreams are a person’s living reality. While in this stage, we believe what we experience is real, but then deny its reality upon awakening as we go about our daily routines. Yet, in many cases, a dream with vivid imagery and bizarre goings on is communicating with the dreamer in an archaic language directly associated with an “Otherworld” reality. This reality exists within us and expresses concepts and ideas about our realm of existence that pertain to our waking lives, as well as to an alternate, archaic life with its own language and ideas transcending physical reality. By studying various myths and folk tales, along with cinematic portrayals of otherworldly experiences, commentary from modern individuals, and reports from traditional shamans who are experts at traversing the Otherworld reality, this text discerns the features and characteristics of this supernatural realm. Contemporary research into the Otherworld marks this realm as corresponding to the unconscious substratum of the human psyche, what C.G. Jung referred to as the collective unconscious. Certain scientists have found evidence of its connection with various aspects of brain functioning, suggesting that the brain in many ways encourages a belief in the Otherworld. However, it would be a mistake to call the Otherworld a figment of the human imagination, since this realm seems to have a type of physical existence. The book considers the Otherworld to exist and provides reasons why rational-thinking individuals are hesitant to accept its existence even when their brains are telling them: the Otherworld is real, and you have just experienced it.

Deconstructing Dreamscapes of Femininity

Deconstructing Dreamscapes of Femininity PDF Author: Lisa Pavlik-Malone
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1036400514
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 120

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Book Description
This book explores the cognitive inter-dynamics of two overarching dimensions of human consciousness, referred to as This World and The Otherworld, respectively. Together, these dimensions may create, for any developing girl, a more-or-less unique experience of the archetype referred to here as Lolita, in the Mist. This “mist” may be a vital detail of Lolita imagery for an individual girl feeling protected enough to explore her budding sexuality in This World that is conjured, to a significant degree, through The Otherworld dimension. Indeed, such imagery may be a part of what dreaming experienced in waking life is made of. The book will be of interest to scholars and other researchers interested in how visual and social perceptual processes, principally through film imagery, might create a more phenomenological experience of the archetype through the interplay between This World and The Otherworld, as each exists within all of us.

Nonrational Logic in Contemporary Society

Nonrational Logic in Contemporary Society PDF Author: Jim Kline
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000861635
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 155

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Book Description
Nonrational Logic in Contemporary Society explores modern examples of beliefs that defy logic but nevertheless are enthusiastically embraced by legions of contemporary people living in technologically advanced societies.The appeal of nonrational logic is based upon C.G. Jung’s ideas regarding archetypes, considered to be unconscious thought and behavioural patterns universal to all of humanity and expressed in dreams, art, religion, and reports of supernatural and paranormal experiences such as the belief in UFOs, conspiracy theories associated with child sacrifice and devil worship, lizard people who secretly rule the world, and internet demons whom many insist are real. C.G. Jung insisted that archetypal reality must be acknowledged for what it is: expressions of universal truths about the human condition. Nonrational Logic includes a multitude of examples from world folklore and reports of traditional customs from around the world collected in the multivolume anthropological classic, The Golden Bough, by James Frazer, comparing these traditional reports with contemporary ones to underscore the human psyche’s obsessive desire to embrace the fantastic, the extraordinary, and the unbelievable. Nonrational Logic in Contemporary Society is important reading for analytical psychologists, Jungian psychotherapists, and other professionals as well as the general public seeking to understand how prevalent nonrational thinking is in modern societies and how it reflects traditional expressions.

Supernatural beings from Slovenian myth and folktales

Supernatural beings from Slovenian myth and folktales PDF Author: Monika Kropej
Publisher: Založba ZRC
ISBN: 961254428X
Category : Animals, Mythical
Languages : en
Pages : 286

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Book Description
Focusing on Slovenian mythology the book contains a review of Slovenian mythological, historical, and narrative material. Over 150 supernatural beings are presented, both lexically and according to the role that they have in Slovenian folklore. They are classified by type, characteristic, features, and by the message conveyed in their motifs and contents. The material has been analysed in the context of European and some non-European mythological concepts, and the author deals with theory and interpretations as well as the conclusions of domestic and foreign researchers. The book forms new starting points and a classification of supernatural beings within a frame of a number of sources, some of which have been published for the first time in this book.

Directory of American Scholars

Directory of American Scholars PDF Author:
Publisher: R. R. Bowker
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 878

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Book Description


Japanese Mythology in Film

Japanese Mythology in Film PDF Author: Yoshiko Okuyama
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 0739190938
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 263

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Book Description
A cyborg detective hunts for a malfunctioning sex doll that turns itself into a killing machine. A Heian-era Taoist slays evil spirits with magic spells from yin-yang philosophy. A young mortician carefully prepares bodies for their journey to the afterlife. A teenage girl drinks a cup of life-giving sake, not knowing its irreversible transformative power. These are scenes from the visually enticing, spiritually eclectic media of Japanese movies and anime. The narratives of courageous heroes and heroines and the myths and legends of deities and their abodes are not just recurring motifs of the cinematic fantasy world. They are pop culture’s representations of sacred subtexts in Japan. Japanese Mythology in Film takes a semiotic approach to uncovering such religious and folkloric tropes and subtexts embedded in popular Japanese movies and anime. Part I introduces film semiotics with plain definitions of terminology. Through familiar cinematic examples, it emphasizes the myth-making nature of modern-day film and argues that semiotics can be used as a theoretical tool for reading film. Part II presents case studies of eight popular Japanese films as models of semiotic analysis. While discussing each film’s use of common mythological motifs such as death and rebirth, its case study also unveils more covert cultural signifiers and folktale motifs, including jizo (a savior of sentient beings) and kori (bewitching foxes and raccoon dogs), hidden in the Japanese filmic text.

The Hero with a Thousand Faces

The Hero with a Thousand Faces PDF Author: Joseph Campbell
Publisher: HarperCollins UK
ISBN: 0586085718
Category : Folklore
Languages : en
Pages : 107

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Book Description
A study of heroism in the myths of the world - an exploration of all the elements common to the great stories that have helped people make sense of their lives from the earliest times. It takes in Greek Apollo, Maori and Jewish rites, the Buddha, Wotan, and the bothers Grimm's Frog-King.

The Absence of Myth

The Absence of Myth PDF Author: Georges Bataille
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1789602653
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
For Bataille, the absence of myth had itself become the myth of the modern age. In a world that had lost the secret of its cohesion, Bataille saw surrealism as both a symptom and a beginning of an attempt to address this loss. His writings on this theme are the result of a profound reflection in the wake of World War Two. The Absence of Myth is the most incisive study yet made of surrealism, insisting on its importance as a cultural and social phenomenon with far-reaching consequences. Clarifying Bataille's links with the surrealist movement, and throwing revealing light on his complex and greatly misunderstood relationship with Andr Breton, The Absence of Myth shows Bataille to be a much more radical figure than his postmodernist devotees would have us believe: a man who continually tried to extend Marxist social theory; a pessimistic thinker, but one as far removed from nihilism as can be.

Speculative Everything

Speculative Everything PDF Author: Anthony Dunne
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262019841
Category : Design
Languages : en
Pages : 235

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Book Description
How to use design as a tool to create not only things but ideas, to speculate about possible futures. Today designers often focus on making technology easy to use, sexy, and consumable. In Speculative Everything, Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby propose a kind of design that is used as a tool to create not only things but ideas. For them, design is a means of speculating about how things could be—to imagine possible futures. This is not the usual sort of predicting or forecasting, spotting trends and extrapolating; these kinds of predictions have been proven wrong, again and again. Instead, Dunne and Raby pose “what if” questions that are intended to open debate and discussion about the kind of future people want (and do not want). Speculative Everything offers a tour through an emerging cultural landscape of design ideas, ideals, and approaches. Dunne and Raby cite examples from their own design and teaching and from other projects from fine art, design, architecture, cinema, and photography. They also draw on futurology, political theory, the philosophy of technology, and literary fiction. They show us, for example, ideas for a solar kitchen restaurant; a flypaper robotic clock; a menstruation machine; a cloud-seeding truck; a phantom-limb sensation recorder; and devices for food foraging that use the tools of synthetic biology. Dunne and Raby contend that if we speculate more—about everything—reality will become more malleable. The ideas freed by speculative design increase the odds of achieving desirable futures.

Man and His Symbols

Man and His Symbols PDF Author: Carl G. Jung
Publisher: Bantam
ISBN: 0307800555
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 433

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Book Description
The landmark text about the inner workings of the unconscious mind—from the symbolism that unlocks the meaning of our dreams to their effect on our waking lives and artistic impulses—featuring more than a hundred images that break down Carl Jung’s revolutionary ideas “What emerges with great clarity from the book is that Jung has done immense service both to psychology as a science and to our general understanding of man in society.”—The Guardian “Our psyche is part of nature, and its enigma is limitless.” Since our inception, humanity has looked to dreams for guidance. But what are they? How can we understand them? And how can we use them to shape our lives? There is perhaps no one more equipped to answer these questions than the legendary psychologist Carl G. Jung. It is in his life’s work that the unconscious mind comes to be understood as an expansive, rich world just as vital and true a part of the mind as the conscious, and it is in our dreams—those personal, integral expressions of our deepest selves—that it communicates itself to us. A seminal text written explicitly for the general reader, Man and His Symbolsis a guide to understanding the symbols in our dreams and using that knowledge to build fuller, more receptive lives. Full of fascinating case studies and examples pulled from philosophy, history, myth, fairy tales, and more, this groundbreaking work—profusely illustrated with hundreds of visual examples—offers invaluable insight into the symbols we dream that demand understanding, why we seek meaning at all, and how these very symbols affect our lives. By illuminating the means to examine our prejudices, interpret psychological meanings, break free of our influences, and recenter our individuality, Man and His Symbols proves to be—decades after its conception—a revelatory, absorbing, and relevant experience.